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Wrist watch computers...


lost_soul

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Ever seen these before? http://www.research.ibm.com/WearableComputing/linuxwatch/linuxwatch.html

 

This was made back around 2000 and it already had 8 megabytes! of memory. It would be cool to see a modern version of something like this with a full color screen and higher specs. I've seen a few Android watches with 600 MHz CPUs, but some problems are still present.

 

A: the screen... You either have to go with a full color screen that requires constant refreshing and can provide fluid motion for video playback, or something like E-Ink which doesn't use nearly as much energy, but can't do fluid motion yet.

B: a good power source... Most of the Android watches I've seen have a battery life of between 12-24 hours. You have to charge them from USB every day. Charging them via USB is a good idea, but surely they could make these things human-powered? IIRC there have been watches with tiny generators in them where two magnets freely move around inside while you move your arm during the day. This generates power for the watch. They could do this, or maybe make it run off of heat.

C: The user-interface... This problem won't be solved for a long long time, possibly decades. There's no way to have a keyboard that small, and speech recognition requires a lot of processing power.

 

Also, I wonder if the watch above could run Doom. I don't even care if it would be impossible to control; if it technically can handle the game, it should run. haha

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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Point C definitely rings with me. "Worn computers" like wristwatches, eyeglasses, etc haven't seemed to catch on in the past decade of development. Bad UI is probably a fine guess as to why. Conspiracy theorists (cf. implanted RFID tags) are probably a contributor as well :P .

 

There was a

back in 2010 where he mentions his
. Technologies never converge into "one happy box", they diverge (E.G. Your home theatre has one DVD player, one Blu-ray player, one TiVo box, several different game consoles, a seperate speaker amplifier, and an A/V switcher for all your misc devices). The exception to this rule is what fits into your pocket (or perhaps in the future -- what fits on your person). Things that fit into your pocket has technologies that like to converge, like swiss army knifes. This may be why the simple PDAs & Palm Pilots I had since 2002 never caught on, but smartphones that are both cellphones and PDAs are selling like mad. Jesse Schell thinks this is why the oversized pocket knife - iPad - wasn't received well :D .

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

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If it had a headphone jack, I would buy one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYlJwW3n1CI

 

You could use it with a small Bluetooth keyboard (SSH into the watch).

 

EDIT: 256 MB of RAM, a 600 MHz ARM-11 CPU, and 2 to 32 GB of storage!

Damn, that's a lot of computing power for driving a 160x160 display. I'll bet you could even get Q3a running on the thing depending on the graphics hardware.

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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EDIT: 256 MB of RAM, a 600 MHz ARM-11 CPU, and 2 to 32 GB of storage!

Damn, that's a lot of computing power for driving a 160x160 display. I'll bet you could even get Q3a running on the thing depending on the graphics hardware.

 

I havn't checked the specs, but with a display like that It'dd be quite logical to choose a soc without GPU... cost and consumption wise at least...

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  • 3 months later...

Not a watch, but still tiny...

 

I ordered one of those MK802s the other day for experimentation/learning about ARM and Android, which I've never messed with at all before. Here is a demonstration of Q3a running on the thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91CjRWIiMyA

It doesn't look so good. Matter of fact, the Raspberry Pi clobbers it in terms of performance even though this has better hardware (by far) than the Pi. The version on the Pi was running in Linux, where as this is an Android version which is supposedly not optimized. Look at that butt-ugly lighting, where as the Pi had lightmaps.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjsMoLFyR60

 

Also, comparing these two systems...

 

http://www.marthomacentre.org.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=18

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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If it had a headphone jack, I would buy one.

You could use it with a small Bluetooth keyboard (SSH into the watch).

 

EDIT: 256 MB of RAM, a 600 MHz ARM-11 CPU, and 2 to 32 GB of storage!

Damn, that's a lot of computing power for driving a 160x160 display. I'll bet you could even get Q3a running on the thing depending on the graphics hardware.

 

Maybe it didn't catch on because you need an account for it on their server, great papereight if their business (or server) goes down, I guess..

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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  • 10 months later...

And then all this happened:

 

2/11/2013: Theregister.co.uk: Apple said to develop curved glass iWatch with Foxconn

2/22/2013: Bbc.co.uk: Apple smart watch efforts confirmed by US patent

3/22/2013: Tech.slashdot.org: Google Reportedly Making a Smartwatch, Too

3/27/2013: Xbitlabs.com: LG Also Works on Augmented Reality Glasses, Smart Interactive Watch - Report.

4/16/2013: Xbitlabs.com: Microsoft Working on Touch-Enabled Watch Device - Report.

5/12/2013: Tomshardware.com: New Patent Reveals Another Google Smartwatch

5/14/2013: Xbitlabs.com: Google Smart Watch to Be Released in Foreseeable Future, Set to Mimic Google Glass.

5/20/2013: Theregister.co.uk: The iWatch is coming! The iWatch is coming! Reports: Apple's wrister to have 1.5-inch OLED, test units being built

5/22/2013: Theregister.co.uk: Smartwatch face off: Pebble, MetaWatch and new hi-tech timepieces

6/17/2013: Theregister.co.uk: Sony allows hacking of its unloved SmartWatch

6/18/2013: Tomshardware.com: Intel Confirms Smartwatch Experimentation

6/21/2013: Theregister.co.uk: Sony set to launch smartwatch in Shanghai next week

6/26/2013: Xbitlabs.com: Sony Introduces Google Android-Based SmartWatch 2 with NFC.

6/27/2013: Theregister.co.uk: Google developing game console, smartwatch, new Q?

7/01/2013: Apple.slashdot.org: Apple Files Trademark For "iWatch" In Japan

7/15/2013: Theregister.co.uk: Microsoft's next device could be a Surface Watch

7/15/2013: Theregister.co.uk: Apple needs help: iWatch, 'Retina' iPad mini delayed until 2014?

7/18/2013: Theregister.co.uk: It's all in the wrist: How to write apps for the Pebble smartwatch

7/21/2013: Tomshardware.com: Apple iWatch Hiring Spree Points to Late 2014 Release

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wristwatch_computer

 

The argument for the smartwatch is that you can have a device on your wrist and your phone in your pocket. The smartwatch doesn't have great hardware or battery capacity, so it uses low-power Bluetooth to communicate with your smartphone, which has an app installed to facilitate communication, displaying text messages, allowing basic control and watch apps to work. The screens of these smartwatches will be around 1.5 inch, ranging from 128x128 to 256x256 resolution (Sony Smartwatch 2 is 220x176, Pebble e-ink watch is 144x168)... oddly enough, YouTube added a "144p" (216x144) ultra low-quality mode to videos recently. If you see someone watching YouTube on their watch, you heard it here first.

 

Will consumers clamor to buy smartwatches? I haven't ruled it out. People still have reasons to wear watches: as fashion/status symbols, to check the time when pulling out a phone might be inappropriate, whatever. It is also faster to check your wrist for the time, or in this case, to catch a snippet of a text message. If smartwatches with microphones come out, you can go full Dick Tracy.

 

What's clear is that smartphones are pocket supercomputers and we're getting more power thrown at us than we "need":

 

7/24/2013: Anandtech.com: NVIDIA Demonstrates Logan SoC: < 1W Kepler, Shipping in 1H 2014, More Energy Efficient than A6X?

7/24/2013: Xbitlabs.com: Samsung's 6Gb LPDDR3 Chips to Enable Smartphones with 3GB of RAM.

8/02/2013: Theregister.co.uk: Qualcomm exec on eight-core mobile chips: They're 'dumb'

 

Above, PS3 level of performance coming to phones (at some point), 3 GB of RAM in a phone (Ubuntu Edge is shooting for 4 GB), and SoC execs badmouthing over 8-core chips being too much for phones/tablets (let alone quad-core). It's clear that smartphones will be the right bricks to power stuff like smartwatches and Google Glass.

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Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch: Cloak lifted on secret details: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/06/samsung_galaxy_gear_smartwatch/

 

Patent documents filed by Samsung have revealed details - for the first time - about what the South Korean tech behemoth's R&D department have been working on over the last few months: a smartwatch.

 

According to a filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office, the gadget - dubbed Samsung Galaxy Gear - falls under the "wearable digital electronic device" category such as "the form of a wristwatch, wrist band or bangle capable of providing access to the internet and for sending and receiving phone calls, electronic mails and messages".

 

The related Samsung Gear mark, meanwhile, has been registered in South Korea.

 

As for the operating system, there's a clear hint from the Galaxy tag that the smartwatch is likely to be running on Android.

 

The market is starting to look crowded with - among others - Apple's iWatch, Microsoft's Surface Watch and now Samsung's Galaxy Gear.

 

Apparently, the tech vendors are gearing up for a bumper watch face-off in 2014, at least - that is - according to analysts at Canalys, who recently predicted that over five million of the gadgets will ship worldwide next year.

 

Pictures detailing the design of the watch appear to show that Samsung is planning to release a gadget "with a body made of flexible displays and elastic materials that can be used while wrapped around a wrist or flattened out", according to a filing submitted in May with the Korean Intellectual Property Office.

 

Sony recently trumpeted that it was six months ahead of the pack in the race to ship a viable smartwatch. Its latest Android-powered, wrist-wrapped gizmo is set for release in September.

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